


Covalence

by PunkHazard



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:18:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2487482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(1) At one time in his life, Barry would have considered it pretty freaking awesome if the love of his life were completely obsessed with him.<br/>(2) Iris has a bad habit of shattering all of Barry’s happy little delusions.<br/>(3) If Barry makes a move on Iris, Joe used to catch himself thinking, their weird little family unit might have problems.<br/>(4) Everything had changed, but in many ways it had all stayed the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"The Flash," Iris says, her eyes shining in the light of her notebook screen in his lab, where she’s taken to hanging out while finishing up her articles (she says it’s easier to focus in a lab and his wifi is fast), "was just sighted near the Central City Library, getting a cat out of a tree. A cat! That’s really cute." 

At one time in his life (that time being when Iris seriously started considering journalism as a career option), Barry would have considered it pretty freaking awesome if the love of his life were completely obsessed with him. The moment he stopped considering it awesome was when Iris told him that she had a deadline for her latest article on the metahumans beat for a class so she wouldn’t be home for dinner that night he was cooking. Besides, there was a fire on Center St. and Third and guess which red-and-lightning streak decided to ‘flash’ (ha! ha!) by? 

Of course, the first time he’d stopped to talk to her as the Flash (Joe really should have considered letting Iris give forensics a shot, the way she’d put her journalist instincts to good use and intercepted him on his way from a scene), him with his voice pitched a raspy two octaves lower and eyes squinted as much as he could so she wouldn’t recognize his face— 

Barry really couldn’t tell if Iris were making eyes at the Flash or if he were just projecting a little, because she had said something ridiculously cute and charming the way she does like, ‘Oh, hey! I just met you and this is creepy, but I’m working on an article about metahumans and you just saved a dozen people, so could you comment maybe?’ 

Anyway, between Barry’s jumbled mess of thoughts, most of them consisting of either _Iris no_ or _oh god that was so cute what the hell_ , he managed to give her a strangled, “Just doing what’s right,” before running sixteen miles out of town to hyperventilate in a cornfield. Cisco and Caitlin took turns gleefully reading his spiking vitals back to him and berating him for his carelessness, respectively. 

Could she have recognized him? Are his escape patterns getting obvious? Why did he stop to talk, anyway, wouldn’t it have been safer to go around her? 

(A day later, Iris described his end of the exchange as ‘gruffly modest’ in her article/blog post, for which Barry is still eternally grateful.) 

Six months ago, hearing Iris dreamily sigh, “The Flash is amazing,” would’ve had him walking on clouds for the rest of the day, mired in the delirious joy of knowing that Iris, for all the ways she already loves and respects him, just flat-out admires him. Instead, Barry’s first thought is ‘ugh, that asshole,’ and then ‘wait I am that asshole,’ closely followed by ‘why do I _do_ this to myself?’ 

He’s too busy sitting with his face buried in his hands to notice Iris’s warm, mischievous grin over the top of her screen. 


	2. Chapter 2

Iris has a bad habit of shattering all of Barry’s happy little delusions. 

Harmless ideas like, 'I'll be able to keep her in the dark about all this.' 'This' being that inconvenient, all-encompassing adoration for every fiber of her being-- and also the metahumans thing. Or 'I'll definitely remember to explain to her with Undefeatable Logic why it's a terrible idea to be blogging about me once I get her on that rooftop.' 

Or! Or, 'I can successfully argue anything with Iris when she looks at me with That Face and uses That Voice and reminds me that she's my best friend and probably for all intents and purposes my soulmate, not that I, a science-minded forensics detective with lateness issues but an otherwise impeccable record, you know, believe in soulmates or anything.' 

False. 

_She's with Eddie now; she won't always have time or room in her thoughts for me._

Nope. 

_My friendship (and embarrassingly one-sided infatuation) with Iris is definitely not the most important relationship I ever had or will ever have._

No cigar, bucko. 

_I can totally handle not seeing Iris for more than a few days at a time._

That's not a lie, yet, but only remains true with an immense, soul-destroying level of heretofore unknown loneliness and heartache the likes of which he remembers experiencing at only one other time in his life. Barry's pretty sure that while he's still alive after extended separation from Iris-- it's really only under duress and functionally doesn't qualify at all as 'handling' the split. 

He makes the mistake of thinking a bit too hard about it, sometimes. 'Help me save my friend' and 'Our entire lives you couldn't scream loud enough that the impossible existed' echoing around inside his head, bouncing off the inside of his skull and clanging in his ears, shattering into pieces when they collide and funneling down his vertebrae to settle like jagged weights inside his chest. 

_(How can she still care so much about me? Why would she go to these lengths? Why would she be so occupied with **my** grief and **my** past with all that other stuff going on in her life even after I said all that to her? It's not like Iris is the most compassionate, smart, adventurous and righteous person I've ever met or anything, right? Not like the entire West family's been the center of my world since Joe took me in, right?)_

Weren't they supposed to last forever? Across multiverses, against all odds, in any situation they could get themselves into? And that was just their friendship, Iris probably hasn't even contemplated the kinds of lifelong commitments that regularly cross Barry's mind when he looks at her. 

' _Oh man,_ ' Barry concludes in despair every time, without fail. _'How is it even possible to be **more** in love with Iris than I already was?'_


	3. Chapter 3

If Barry makes a move on Iris, Joe used to catch himself thinking, their weird little family unit might have problems. Big problems. They were probably about fourteen then— a wildly hormonal and uncomfortable age for children and parents (respectively) alike, doubly so for Joe, trying to raise the two kids by himself. 

He’d rehearsed the Talk (and several other talks, with keywords ranging from ‘appropriate age’ and ‘boundaries’ to ‘relationships’ and ‘respect’), stocked up on readings about foster care, and carefully observed their behavior. Joe was prepared, Joe knew the signs, Joe waited— almost eagerly— for the day he could put all his research to use.

And that day never came.

Sometime in the fourteen years since Barry came to live with them, Joe went from dreading the talk to wondering if he’d ever have to have it with Barry (and Iris, if she happened to one day notice his feelings or reciprocate). By the time he found himself mentally jumping up and down, yelling at Barry in his mind over a pan of sizzling bacon to just tell her already, they were twenty-two and he’d decided that Barry was The One.

If Barry could go eleven years (almost all of which he’d spent in love with her) respecting the hell out of Iris’s boundaries and privacy, on top of being her best friend in the world, there was no way in hell he’d be anything other than a model boyfriend (and husband and more importantly _son-in-law_ ). And if they happened to start something— as was, to Joe’s mind, definitely forthcoming— he would be sure to allow his fatherly feelings toward Barry offset the murderous protectiveness he would inevitably feel for Iris. 

It’s only a matter of time; he planned to give Barry until they were twenty-eight before active plotting was to commence. 

That’s a good age, right? Twenty-eight? Joe was originally aiming for forty, but he’d considered that he might be too old to really play with the grandkids by then. Surely, Barry would be at minimum a mature, responsible and financially stable adult at twenty-eight? As for Iris, journalism’s dying but it’s safer than police work.

Anyway, twenty-five is old enough for the gentle push he’d given by firmly declaring himself to be in whatever camp has Barry and his daughter together forever. 

For now, Joe waits.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: the wedding

Iris is sobbing by the time she makes it down the aisle. Barry has to wonder, for a second, what exactly has her so scared before he sees the joy in her eyes, her helpless smile, her confident posture in a wedding dress with clusters of (she’d insisted) white and purple irises decorating the seats and arch behind the wedding officiant. Barry, for one, knows that nothing’s going to change between them. Nothing _had_ changed between them, not since he and Iris became best friends. That was the biggest surprise for him, when they’d started dating.

( _Everything_ had changed, but in many ways it had all stayed the same. Their relationship was simultaneously in a state of ‘changed’ and ‘unchanged’ and Iris had cut him off before he could make the Schroedinger joke, but Cisco had finished the sentence for him, the two of them giving each other ecstatic high-fives while Caitlin and Iris rolled their eyes.)

Seeing Iris weepy invokes the same in Barry, who’s never really been shy about expressing emotion anyway. Joe is already blowing his nose into a handkerchief, bought specially for this occasion. Henry, on the groom’s side of the aisle, has been intermittently wiping his eyes since Barry arrived; the West-Allens are sympathetic criers. It’s a problem, except it’s totally not.

Iris carefully wipes her eyes, clearing away the wet tracks on her cheeks before the photographer can catch them on her face.

"Is everything okay?" Barry asks under his breath, taking her slim hands in his and thumbing at the dampness on her fingertips. He clearly recalls every time she’d cried in front of him, mascara and eyeliner running before she’d rush to the bathroom to clean it off. She’d always hated being seen like that. "Would you need to like, fix your makeup or something?"

Iris laughs, corners of her deep brown eyes crinkling, even more tears welling up. She sniffs, taking a sheet of tissue from— somewhere?! and dabs at her tears before handing the crumpled paper over for storage until they can throw it out. “Please Barry,” she whispers back, suddenly sharp-eyed and smug, “it’s waterproof.”


End file.
